1980 Week: Fatso

          Throughout the ’80s, Mel Brooks enjoyed a thriving side career as the head of Brooksfilms, which produced The Elephant Man (1980), My Favorite Year (1982), and The Fly (1986). Not every Brooksfilms release clicked, but it was a good run. Among the lesser Brooksfilms offerings was this well-meaning dramedy, the sole feature film written and directed by Brooks’ second wife, actress Anne Bancroft. (The two were married from 1964 to her death in 2005.) Starring occasional Brooks collaborator Dom DeLuise, the picture concerns exactly what the title suggests: a man struggling with his weight. The comedy aspect stems from scenes of indulgence, with the title character and his overweight friends gorging themselves in ridiculous ways, and the dramatic aspect stems from the title character’s efforts to surmount the self-loathing that stifles his ability to make better choices. In its best moments, the picture shares some qualities with the classic character study Marty (1955), another tale of a pudgy New Yorker struggling to believe that he deserves romantic affection. What’s more, Fatso is utterly sincere, regarding its troubled protagonist with empathy instead of judgment, and DeLuise plays the role for pathos rather than cheap laughs.

          The bad news is that Bancroft lacks nuance and skill, no surprise given that she’d only directed one short film prior to this project. For instance, it’s overly convenient that Dominick (DeLuise) happens upon the lovely Lydia (Candice Azzara), who overlooks his girth—and the health risks accompanying obesity—because her late father was also heavy. Bancroft’s storytelling comes dangerously close to “I’m okay, you’re okay” platitudes, as if accepting oneself is a reasonable compromise for sustaining unhealthy behavior patterns. It doesn’t help that Fatso largely comprises scenes of people screaming at each other. Bancroft appears as Dominick’s overbearing sister, and her scenes with DeLuise are highly abrasive. So, too, are vignettes with Dominick’s support group, the “Chubby Checkers,” whom Bancroft portrays as repressed maniacs forever on the verge of gluttonous meltdowns. (Though the movie doesn’t judge Dominick, it seems to blithely malign fat people in general.) As a narrative, the picture sorta-kinda works, and DeLuise plays sad scenes effectively. But as a piece of filmmaking, this is highly amateurish stuff.

Fatso: FUNKY

The Prisoner of Second Avenue (1975)

          Anger and darkness aren’t the first things that come to mind upon hearing the name “Neil Simon,” but it’s useful to remember an aphorism that was likely coined by TV funnyman Steve Allen: “Comedy is tragedy plus time.” In other words, misfortune is so integral to the soul of humor that exploring the grim subject matter permeating The Prisoner of Second Avenue really wasn’t such a leap for the guy behind such bittersweet classics as The Odd Couple. Where The Prisoner of Second Avenue represents a break from Simon’s usual style, however, is that the writer doesn’t hide pain behind pratfalls. Although the movie, based on Simon’s 1971 play of the same name, has plenty of the writer’s signature rat-a-tat dialogue as well as a steady stream of visual gags, it’s not designed as a laugh riot, per se. Rather, it’s a bitterly satirical exploration of the myriad ways the modern world can drive people insane.

          Jack Lemmon and Anne Bancroft, both perfectly cast, star as Mel and Edna Edison, residents of Manhattan’s Upper East Side. During a heat wave that’s compounded by a garbage strike and periodic power outages, Mel spirals toward a nervous breakdown that’s triggered by hassles with neighbors, the loss of a job, a robbery, and other traumas. And when Mel finally decides to fight back at the unjust universe, he manages to pick the wrong target, mistaking a young man (Sylvester Stallone) for a mugger and then chasing the poor guy through Central Park and seizing his wallet, which Mel believes to be his own. Upon discovering his mistake, Mel reports to Edna, “I mugged some kid in the street.” Proving she’s reached her limit, as well, she replies, “How much did we get?”

          That wild sequence, which Simon characteristically nails with a perfect comic grace note, is indicative of The Prisoner of Second Avenue’s vibe. In many ways, this is a serious picture about troubling topics, and yet it’s presented flippantly. Not only does the wiseass humor suit the milieu, but it reveals one aspect of Simon’s genius—using jokes to make the exploration of pathos palatable to people who might normally avoid, say, the work of Arthur Miller or Eugene O’Neill. To be clear, neither The Prisoner of Second Avenue nor, for that matter, any of Simon’s stories should be mistaken for titanic literary achievements. Simon writes trifles, and some of them have more nutritional value than others. For instance, the takeaway from The Prisoner of Second Avenue has something to do with gaining perspective and not letting the pressures of daily life metastasize into full-on neuroticism. Simon services these themes well, dramatizing that some of Mel’s problems are of his own making.

          Lemmon, who previously appeared in the screen version of Simon’s The Odd Couple (1968) and the Simon screen original The Out-of-Towners (1970), is an ideal vessel for the writer’s laments about obnoxious neighbors, overbearing relatives, and unfeeling corporations. Meanwhile, Bancroft is an excellent foil, playing early scenes straight but then echoing Lemmon’s character with a downward spiral of her own. So, even if producer-director Melvin Frank’s execution is little more than serviceable, the material and the performances are winning. Additionally, The Prisoner of Second Avenue captures a particular time, that being the bad old days when New York City was poised on the edge of oblivion thanks to financial problems, rampant crime, and ubiquitous cynicism.

The Prisoner of Second Avenue: GROOVY

1980 Week: The Elephant Man

          Here’s one of my favorite bits of movie trivia—Mel Brooks is responsible for unleashing David Lynch on the world. Sort of. After expanding an American Film Institute student project into the bizarre feature Eraserhead (1977), Lynch caught the attention of a producer at Brooks’ short-lived production company, Brooksfilms. This led to Lynch getting hired as the director for The Elephant Man, which Lynch did not originate but which completely suits the filmmaker’s dark style. Thus, a connection was permanently formed between the funnyman who filled the Wild West with flatulence in Blazing Saddles (1974) and the experimentalist who combined huffing and rape in Blue Velvet (1986).

          Anyway, The Elephant Man is in some ways Lynch’s most accessible movie, even though it’s black-and-white, set during the Victorian era, and profoundly sad. Notwithstanding some flourishes during dream sequences, The Elephant Man is entirely reality-based, so Lynch doesn’t rely on any of his usual surrealist tricks. Instead, he demonstrates an extraordinary gift for stylized storytelling, because Lynch swaths this poignant narrative with a perfect aesthetic of murky shadows, silky rhythms, and undulating textures. (Lynch and his collaborators create such magical effects with editing, music, production design, and sound effects that the film seems to have a tangible pulse.) The director also guides his cast through masterful performances.

          Based on the real-life exploits of Joseph Merrick, an Englishman afflicted with neurofibromatosis, the movie tracks Merrick from the indignity of life as a circus attraction to the period during which he was accepted by polite society thanks to the patronage of a sympathetic doctor. Renamed John Merrick in the script, the character is a paragon of dignity, suffering the exploitation of cretins and the revulsion of gawkers without manifesting the rage to which he was surely entitled. The saintly portrayal tips the narrative scales, to be sure, but this approach suits the film’s overall themes: More than anything, The Elephant Man is about society’s inability to embrace unique people.

          When the story begins, Merrick (John Hurt) is kept as a virtual slave by a beastly carnival barker named Bytes (Freddie Jones). One evening, aristocratic Dr. Frederick Treves (Anthony Hopkins) sees Merrick on display and marvels at Merrick’s deformities, which include an oversized head, a misshapen spine, and various large tumors. Treves buys Merrick’s freedom and contrives to find Merrick a permanent home inside a London hospital. Later, Merrick is presented to society and shown a mixture of pity and respect that he perceives as love. Crystallizing Merrick’s acceptance is his friendship with a famous stage actress (Anne Bancroft), who visits Merrick regularly without ever evincing disgust at his appearance. The demons of Meerick’s old life aren’t so easily kept at bay, however, because Bytes and other tormenters forever threaten to ruin Merrick’s salvation.

          Despite being made with consummate craftsmanship on every level (the movie received 10 Oscar nominations), The Elephant Man is painful to watch, simply because of the amount of suffering that Merrick experiences in every scene. Yet there’s great beauty to the film, as well, particularly during the heartbreaking final sequence, which is set to Samuel Barber’s exquisite “Adagio for Strings.” Part character study, part medical mystery, and part morality tale, The Elephant Man is a singular film of tremendous power.

The Elephant Man: RIGHT ON

The Turning Point (1977)

          Making fun of The Turning Point requires little effort, since it’s such a consummate “chick flick” that it almost seems like it was designed to repel heterosexual males—the picture is a tearjerker about friendship in the ballet world starring two middle-aged women. And, indeed, the movie’s narrative is exactly as soapy as the premise might suggest. That said, The Turning Point is worthwhile in every important way. The acting is great, the cinematography is beautiful, the dancing is terrific, the direction is fluid, and the writing is intelligent. In short, The Turning Point is highbrow schmaltz—very much like The Way We Were (1973), another project that sprang from the pen of writer Arthur Laurents.

          The Turning Point tells the story of two lifelong friends who reconnect after a long period of estrangement. As young women, DeeDee (Shirley MacLaine) and Emma (Anne Bancroft) were both promising ballerinas in New York City. DeeDee chose family, hooking up with fellow dancer Wayne (Tom Skerritt) to set up housekeeping in Oklahoma, while Emma became a star. The picture begins with Emma arriving in Oklahoma for a performance, which occasions a reunion with her old friend after the show. As the women subsequently bond and clash, old differences manifest in harsh judgments about each other’s lives. The picture also tracks the ascendance of DeeDee’s daughter, Emilia (Leslie Browne), a promising young ballerina onto whom both older women project their dreams. The biggest subplot involves Emilia’s hot romance with Yuri, a ballet star played by (and modeled after) Mikhail Baryshnikov.

           The movie’s torrid narrative tackles such themes as age, ambition, betrayal, jealousy, regret, and, eventually, the gaining of wisdom through experience. Much of the film, of course, is devoted to dance, with long sequences of Bancroft faking her way through routines and of real-life dancers Baryshnikov and Browne strutting their stuff. Director Herbert Ross, himself a former dancer, clearly approached this film with great love—in fact, Browne was his godchild—and he generated both impassioned acting and lyrical imagery. Nobody phones in a performance for The Turning Point, and all four principal players—Bancroft, Baryshinkov, Browne, and MacLaine—received Oscar nominations. (The picture scored 11 nods in all, though it lost in every category.)

          Yet even with such exemplary work, The Turning Point is not one of those niche-interest movies that surpasses its inherent limitations by speaking to universal themes. Viewers who don’t dig ballet or scenes of women talking about their feelings will find little to love here. Even the picture’s breakout star, Baryshnikov, is a treat for the ladies, because he’s charismatic, muscular, and sensitive—an exotic hunk in tights. So perhaps it’s best to regard The Turning Point as a beautifully made throwback to the studio era, when such powerful actresses as Joan Crawford and Bette Davis regularly starred in what are now pejoratively referred to as “women’s pictures.”

The Turning Point: GROOVY

Young Winston (1972)

          It’s appropriate that the longest sequence in Young Winston takes place during the Boer War, because the movie is a bore. Restrained and respectful in the extreme, this adaptation of a memoir by the revered UK wartime leader Winston Churchill sprawls across 157 lugubrious minutes. Written for the screen and produced by the great Carl Foreman, with Richard Attenborough handling the direction, the film boasts impressive production values but an overly sterile narrative style.
          The most interesting thread of the movie relates to future politician Winston's fraught relationship with his father, forceful Member of Parliament Lord Randolph Churchill (Robert Shaw). During childhood, Winston struggles to earn his aloof father's attention, and during adulthood, Winston seeks revenge against the political establishment that bested his father. This is rich stuff, but Foreman and Attenborough approach the intense family material with the stuffiness of textbook authors. Another thread of the picture involves Winston's relationship with his American-born mother, Lady Churchill (Anne Bancroft). She represents an interesting collision between aggressive and passive impulses, but her complexities remain largely unexplored. The third and final major thread of the story—which gets the most screen time--involves Winston's military career. Alas, the filmmakers can't decide where they stand on Winston's conduct as an officer. Is he a hero willing to risk all for his country and himself (two entities he considers inextricably linked), or is he the glory-hound his detractors criticize him for being? Like so many questions that are raised by Young Winston, this one goes unanswered.

          Foreman integrated many of Churchill's own musings into the script, and those remarks are read in voiceover by star Simon Ward, performing a cartoonish impression of the real Churchill's distinctive speech pattern. Attenborough, who later found his groove as a director of critic-proof dramas about saintly characters—notably Gandhi (1982)—delivers acceptable work during the picture's big-canvas scenes, such as those depicting Winston's battlefield exploits circa the late 19th century and early 20th century. (It helps that the filmmaker shamelessly copies David Lean’s pictorial techniques.) Attenborough's filmmaking doesn't fare as well during close-quarters sequences. For instance, he relies on an ineffective device of filming just one side of long interview scenes while an unseen journalist peppers the interview subject with questions. These scenes drag on forever.

          Not all of Young Winston’s shortcomings should be blamed on Attenborough, however. Leading man Ward (who plays Winston as a young adult) lacks charisma and dynamism, which short-circuits the whole enterprise, and Foreman’s script features excruciating detail about the internecine processes of British government. (Even the long Boer War sequence, which portrays Winston's capture by enemy forces and subsequent daring escape, gets bogged down with narration explaining the political significance of Winston’s situation.) Unsurprisingly, Shaw gives the closest thing the picture has to a full-blooded performance. His appearance climaxes with a poignant scene of Lord Churchill succumbing to mental decay in the midst of a speech. But if the best scene in a two-and-a-half-hour biopic doesn't revolve around the protagonist, that’s a problem.

Young Winston: FUNKY

The Hindenburg (1975)

          A generation before James Cameron put Kate and Leo aboard the Titanic, transforming a historical tragedy into the colorful backdrop for a silly fictional story, the makers of The Hindenburg used a similar gimmick for their movie about history’s most famous airship disaster. Based on a speculative book by Michael M. Mooney, the picture presents one of the sexiest theories for why the famous zeppelin crashed while docking in New Jersey after a 1937 transatlantic voyage from Nazi Germany, where the ship was considered a powerful symbol of Third Reich accomplishment. According to the movie, anti-Nazi conspirators planned to destroy the ship after the passengers were safely away, but then a perfect storm of circumstance led to the deaths of 36 people.

          Completely missing every opportunity presented by this edgy storyline, The Hindenburg is a slow-moving bore filled with drab subplots, trite characterizations, and woefully little action. Using a tired Agatha Christie-type structure, the movie introduces Col. Franz Ritter (George C. Scott), a German pilot sent by the Nazi high command to spy on crew and passengers because of a bomb threat that was issued prior to the ship’s departure from Germany. (In typical disaster-movie fashion, every sensible person in the story recommends delaying the trip, but the expeditious high command insists on a timely liftoff.)

          Once the Hindenburg is airborne, Ritter pokes around the lives of various people, looking for clues of bad intent, so the picture quickly falls into a clichéd cycle of melodramatic vignettes that are supposed to make the audience wonder (and care) who’s going to live and who’s going to die. Unfortunately, none of the characters is interesting—not the German countess who shares romantic history with Ritter; not the songwriter and clown performing anti-Hitler routines; not the twitchy crewman whom the audience can identify as the saboteur the first time he appears onscreen. It doesn’t help that the supporting cast almost exclusively comprises character actors: William Atherton, Robert Clary, Charles Durning, Richard Dysart, Burgess Meredith, Roy Thinnes, and Gig Young are all solid performers, but they’re not exactly the mid-’70s A-list. (Lending a pinch more marquee value is Anne Bancroft.)

          The film’s production values are impressive-ish, including vivid re-creations of the Hindenburg’s interiors, and some of the flying shots feature handsome old-school effects, but director Robert Wise’s dramaturgy is so turgid that even these quasi-spectacular elements are for naught. Viewers who soldier through the whole movie are rewarded with a 20-minute climax featuring a detailed re-enactment of the Hindenburg disaster, which Wise presents in black-and-white so he can intercut his footage with newsreel shots of the real Hindenburg. This laborious denouement offers thrills, but it’s all too little, too late.

          If nothing else, the filmmakers get points for the sheer nerve of ending this bloated whale of a movie with vintage audio from the famous “Oh, the humanity!” radio broadcast: The last thing viewers hear before the credits is a voice announcing, “This is the worst thing I’ve ever witnessed.” Cinematic self-awareness?

The Hindenburg: LAME

Lipstick (1976)

The notorious revenge thriller Lipstick has a gruesome first act and a hilariously overwrought finale, but the middle of the picture is so earnest that it’s as if elements of a sleazy exploitation flick were grafted onto either end of something respectable. In other words, it’s a classic example of pure WTF cinema. The story follows fashion model Chris McCormick (Margaux Hemingway), who is brutally raped by Gordon Stuart (Chris Sarandon), the favorite teacher of Chris’ teenaged sister, Kathy (Mariel Hemingway). The movie stacks the deck from the get-go, because Gordon is an obvious nutjob who composes violently avant-garde music, and he leers like a dog in heat when joins Kathy to watch one of Chris’ provocative photo shoots, so it’s not as if nuance is the order of the day. A humiliating trial follows the rape, and during the trial, a firebrand assistant DA (Anne Bancroft) fails to get a conviction—then, when Gordon crosses paths with the McCormick sisters once more, a bloody showdown ensues. Handsome photography (by Bill Butler and William A. Fraker), plus intense performances by Bancroft and Sarandon, aren’t enough to overcome the movie’s shamelessness. This Dino De Laurentiis production is infamous for its bad taste, evidenced by a rape scene that’s grotesque for the wrong reasons: The filmmakers keep sneaking peeks at Chris’ disrobed body. And yet the long trial sequence, which takes up a third of the movie, effectively demonstrates how Chris gets raped all over again, only psychologically this time, by Gordon’s merciless attorney (Robin Gammell). Unfortunately, any temptation to cut the movie slack is obliterated by the over-the-top climax, in which (spoiler alert!) Gordon rapes young Kathy while her older sister’s working nearby, prompting Chris to chase Gordon with a hunting rifle while wearing a cherry-red ball gown.

Lipstick: LAME

Silent Movie (1976)

          After discovering his gift for spoofing movie genres with Blazing Saddles and Young Frankenstein, both of which were released in 1974, Mel Brooks lost his way with Silent Movie. By many reports, Brooks’ considerable ego was to blame for the precipitous drop in the quality of his pictures, because he burned an important bridge by alienating actor-writer Gene Wilder, who starred in both 1974 hits, after taking too much credit for Young Frankenstein. So even though Brooks enjoyed long relationships with talented collaborators, including actors like Dom DeLuise and Marty Feldman, as well as behind-the-scenes talents like composer John Morris, it was clear that on a Mel Brooks picture, only the name above the title really mattered. Therefore, in Silent Movie, it’s all about Mel, and not in a good way. Brooks cast himself in the leading role, and his legendary comic gifts aren’t enough to compensate for his shortcomings as an actor. He plays for the cheap seats with every reaction shot, bludgeons the delivery of jokes with bug-eyed obviousness, and can’t muster the varied nuances that Wilder brought to his performances in Brooks films.

          It doesn’t help, of course, that Silent Movie adheres to the gimmick implied by its title: Like an old one-reeler from the Mack Sennett era, the picture uses title cards in place of dialogue, which gives it a stop-and-start rhythm that soon grows wearying. The storyline is amusing-ish, with a film director (Brooks) trying to produce a brand-new silent movie in the modern era, and Silent Movie features cameos by big names who relish making idiots of themselves: Anne Bancroft, James Caan, Liza Minnelli, Paul Newman, Burt Reynolds. (In a clever touch, French mine Marcel Marceau delivers the movie’s only line of spoken dialogue.) Brooks has fun executing exuberant physical comedy in the silent-era style with the assistance of core players DeLuise, Feldman, Sid Caesar, Ron Carey, Harold Gould, and Bernadette Peters, but the film’s slapstick is so endlessly insipid that the fervent efforts of the cast are mostly wasted. It’s hard to actively dislike Silent Movie since it’s trying so hard to be entertaining, but it’s hard to get excited about it, either.

Silent Movie: LAME